


Time's Victim

by Yeah_Toast



Series: Interesting Times [6]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Timeline, Cold gun, Hearing Voices, M/M, Minor Character Death, Poor Life Choices, Post Shreveport, We've reached the Canon storyline, a canon one at that, canon character death, heat gun, time lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 22:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_Toast/pseuds/Yeah_Toast
Summary: We go back and forth between being time’s master and its victim.-James Gleick~~~Len learns about the Cold Gun.





	Time's Victim

**Author's Note:**

> I've posted 100 fanfics!!!!

“I’ve got something you might be interested in,” Nurblin tells him when he picks up the phone. “Something real special.”

“Not interested,” Len tells him, counting the seconds until he hears the frantic scrambling of a desperate salesman. 

“Wait,” Nurblin calls out. “Wait, you haven’t heard what I’ve got to offer: two guns.”

“I’m already armed,” Leonard tells him finger hovering over the end call button.

“These are different, I got them at STAR Labs.”

“STAR Labs?”

“A cold gun, fires at absolute zero, and a heat gun, it apparently fires at absolute hot as well.”

“ _ Take them.” _

Leonard holds back a flinch. The voice hasn’t spoken to him in months, not since he’d stopped looking in on Mick after his release from the hospital.

“Say I’m interested.”

‘Why should I? ’ He thinks, careful not to speak aloud and catch Nurblin’s attention. He lets the man babble on, trying to sell his goods.

_ “Are you implying you aren’t interested?” _

‘Of course I am. I just don’t trust you.’

_ “I won’t even tell you what to do with them, just take them.” _

“I’ll take them.” Len tells Nurblin, and he makes his plans. 

He isn’t doing it for the voice. He’s doing it for himself. He’s known since he heard cold and heat that it’s perfect for him and Mick, that it’s time to return. He misses Mick more than anything, misses Lisa, misses having a family, someone outside of the grunts he employs in his heists and the icy voice in his head.

Besides, he’s been looking for a solution to his Flash problem since the man had interfered in his Kahndaq Diamond heist. Afterall, he’s not going to stop committing crime just because there’s some superpowered freak.

“Before I go back,” Len whispers. “Before I go back, I need you to tell me if anything has actually changed. You being here, messing with my life, are you even making a difference?”

_ “We’ve made changes.” _

“Enough to stop whatever future you wanted me about?”

_ “Enough that we have a chance. As I told you in your youth, your future is set in stone, only steady erosion can change it.” _

“Right.” Len scoffs. “And I should believe you.”

_ “I will not let harm befall you, not if I can avoid it.” _

“You let Mick get hurt.”

_ “Yes. But you are both alive.” _

He doesn’t talk to the voice again, not even after his arrival in Central City. He meets Nurblin in a warehouse, and when he holds the gun in his hand he knows that the voice is right, he will take the guns. 

He shoots Nurblin, and makes his way to his safe house where he assesses the cold gun, and practices using it. He ignores the heat gun, sitting on the corner of a nearby table. There will be time for that later. 

He goes to the museum alone after his men mutiny. He didn’t need them, despite the whisper in his head that argues the more men he has the better. The cold gun makes everything much simpler, as does the constant countdown to when the police will arrive. As he flees towards the train station, he thinks only that Mick would love this.

_ "You didn’t have to do this without him."  _

He did though. He had to do this, had to feel confident in his abilities as a thief before he could ever expect Mick to trust him again. Before he trusted himself with Mick again.

It’s only after he derails a train and disappears from the Flash’s gaze that he finally accepts the truth. It’s time for him to find Mick, time to go see the love of his life again. All of this villainy, the dramatics, it’s been a distraction, a way to avoid facing his fears.

He finds Mick in the Saints and Sinners, drinking in solitude. For a moment he pauses in the doorway, ignoring the way that the bar falls silent. He watches Mick for a second, the way that the scars left by the flames ripple up and down his arms; he wonders how else the man has changed.

“Snart,” Mick greets him. His eyes are cold in a way usually attributed to Len himself.

_ “Get him back.” _

“Rory,” he replies. 

Without another word, Mick throws cash down on the bar and exits, Len following closely behind. He’s glad that Mick doesn’t want to do this here, do this now. 

“I’m glad to see you looking so well,” Len tells him.

“No thanks to you.”

Len thinks back on all the updates Mick’s nurse had given him. All the bribes and tricks needed to get Mick the care he deserved rather than the care they assumed he could afford. He thinks about how he framed the Shreveport job and subsequent fire on some kid fresh out of jail to ensure that Mick wouldn’t be held responsible.

“I deserve that,” He agrees.

“You do. You left me. I was vulnerable, and you left. Why?”

_ “Tell him the truth _ ,” The voice demands, as though Len cares what it has to say anymore; he makes his own decisions now, unimpacted.

He looks at his feet. “I was angry at myself. I got you hurt, Mick. You could have died! You could have died and I didn’t stop it, I couldn’t help you. What’s the point of the damn voice in my head if it won’t help when you need it to?”

“I wasn’t dead though,” Mick tells him. “Just alone.”

“Not alone,” Len argues, “You had Lisa, if you needed me I would have come.”

Mick simply grunts, and Len knows that it’s time to table the conversation for now. Continuing it with Mick like this won’t get him any closer to working things out.

“I’ve got something for you,” he tells Mick, pulling out the extra gun. “It’s a heat gun, shoots at absolute hot, whatever that means.”

Mick takes the gun and fires it into the air, a wide grin splitting his face when he lowers it.

They aren’t okay, but they will be.

  
  



End file.
